1. Field of Disclosure
This disclosure generally relates to the field of automated text and image classification, and specifically relates to automatic attribute labeling of products.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet is now widely used by consumers for browsing and purchasing products of various types. Consumers often wish to browse products that have a particular attribute (e.g. shoes with high-heels), and service providers—such as product retailers and search engines—have an incentive to provide users with links to products that possess the attributes that they desire. When a consumer requests products with a particular attribute from a service provider, the service provider often retrieves links to these products based on matching the consumer's text query to product data (such as image labels and product descriptions) associated with the product. Unfortunately, for many products this data is missing, inaccurate, uninformative, or incomplete. As a result, when a consumer makes a request for products having a particular attribute, many products that do have the attribute in reality, but do not have a text label for that attribute, may be missed by the service provider, and may not be provided to the requesting consumer.